Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-11-05
THE BEST OF LIFE.
Our Earthly Existence Amounts to Some
thing After All

THE BEST OF LIFE.
Our Earthly Existence Amounts to Some
thing After All.
10 those who are intent upon maxine
the best of lie, it is not little depressing
10 be told by poets and philosophers that
our earthly existence does not amount to
much. One informs us that
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
AS tapers waste that instant they take fire
Another says, Death doth Turk always in
LIES delicious cup" and third declares
that " The life of man is summ'd in birth
days and in sepulchres." Looking at life.
however, from the standpoint of expert
ence rather than of theory, we cannot but
think that it is richly worth living even
IN Its mere physical stage 1t is most prob
able that the dark-hued pessimistlc views
OF this our life may arise from lack of this
! physical condition, from morbidness of
body by which poets and philosophers
| have been SO often characterized. They
have made too little of physical we'll
being, and have often failed in consequence
TO feed the fires of their genius with essen
tai fuel. Far better would it have been
had they held with the adage that "a hale
| cobbler Is better than sick king" and.
instead of discounting life at every turn.
had exclaimed with the poet of the Sab
bath:
Q health thou sun of life, without whose beams
ne iairest scenes of nature seem involved
IN darkness, shine upon my dreary path
once more.
Physical well-being is a matter of health:
and when in ill-health it is Just as well to
own with DR.. Dome, that our feeble flesh
doth waste because there is something
wrong in it; and then make it our business
to get that something out of it as speedily
as possible. This, of course, cannot ALWAYS
be done, hence it is incumbent to watch
the ways and keep the enemy out of the
citadel, on the ground that an ounce of
prevention is better than pound of cure.
10 do this there must be proper balance
Of work and play, of exercise and rest, of
meat and drink, OF mental sustenance and
social recreation, and of the highest conso-
lations
1t is not work of supererogation in our
time to say that the balance of work and
play, especially in the sense of toll and
ldleness, needs very much to be adjusted.
Some people work too hard, Others not
enough and others not at all. A proper
amount of work is helpful to physical we'll
being. As DR.. Armstrong, in his poem on
health and exercise, enioined
Toll and be strong. By toll the placid nerves
Grow firm aud gain a more compacted tone
While as for idleness, it is, as old Burton
puts 1t, the bane of the body and mind,
the nurse of naughtineSs, the chief author
Of all mischief, one of the seven deadly
| sins, and great cause not only of melan-
| choly but of many other diseases" These
things need all the more properly bal
| ancing, because, though work, when it
deteriorates into drudgery, is the begin
ming of physical dissolution, 'idleness," as
Chaucer declared, sis the gate of all
| harness"
The raiment and what is termed the
'cheer" of life have an important place in
| relation to the physical well-being. 1t
may be that, as Decker in his "GulPs
Hornbook" affirms good clothes are the
embroidered trappings of pride, and good
cheer the very root of glutiony." Yet
good clothes and good cheer have great
deal to do with the body's condition.
Neither of those things need necessarily
to be esteemed over-much, but rather in
| the sense of that enough which, on pro.
'NADAs~i 10 SOOQ Us a letSl.
Physical suicide is the inevitable end of
overmuch good cheer" Beaumont and
Fletcher made one of their characters to
say of drinking, Lets never leave off
now whilst we have wine and throats,n
and they make another to say that "sur-
feits destroy more than the sword" Such
Is good cheer" run wild, and not many
can plead ignorance of what its conse-
quence will be. Overmuch thus evenuates
IN vieiousness, and viciousness results in
physical disability. "All ills spring from
some vice" wrote David Hume in one of
his essays, and many of our diseases pro-
coed from the same origin. Remove the
vice and its ills follow
Thus the physical well-being must rest
upon broad and solid foundation. We
are touched, so to say, at many points on
this matter. The source of the good cheer
is not to be unminded. Only the bread of
industry and honesty is always and alto
gether nourishing. Fuller in his Mkt
CONCENTRATIONS" illustrated this in his
inimitably quaint way over two centuries
ago. He said: upon the question,
What is the worst bread which is eaten p
One answered, in respect of the coarse
ness thereof, Bread made of beans An
other said, Bread made of acorns.' But
the third hit the truth, and said, Bread
| taken out of other mems mouths, who are
the true proprietors thereof Such bread
| may be sweet in the mouth to taste, but is
not wholesome in the stomach to digest"
That which is got i'll can never nourish
well.
Cheerfulness and culture have more to
do with physical well-being than many
wot Of JOY is a helper, and that continu-
ally, for, as Thomas Carlyle expressed it:
"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness,
| altogether past calculation its power of
| endurance. Efforts to be permanently use
full must be uniformly joyous, spirit all
sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beau
tiful because bright" Melancholy is the
| very nurse of disease. Cheerfulness is in
deed the safeguard of health, and for those
who are not in good condition it would be
sensible to take the advice of one of our
old writers, who said Laugh and be
we'll" Besides this, mental sustenance is
| helpful to health. We have it on the best
authority that " Wisdom maketh the face
to shine" and shining face, when natu-
rally brought about, is surely sign of
| health anyway, universal agreement goes
with the bard who characterized the typ
ical boy of the ages as having shining
morning face" If culture thus makes it
self seen for good, we cannot doubt; but it
makes itself felt for good as well. As phys
zeal light is to the earth, so is intellectual
illumination and loving cheerfulness to the
body of man-they bless in myriad Ways,
their influence is Unreasonable, and they
prepare for those higher CONCENTRATIONS
and consultations without which man is
like the things which appear as if but to
vanish away.-Home Journal.
UNIQUE HOSPITALITY.